Gum Drop Dead: Cupcake Truck Mysteries

by Emily James

  I moved forward. The name plate on the door said Leon Schwab.

  Before my eyes could register his title, a man’s form filled the doorway. He didn’t look anything like a Leon. He didn’t look anything like Donald Wells either. He had the kind of face that could have landed him a role as one of the doctors on Grey’s Anatomy that showed up in all the “steamy” and “dreamy” memes online. I’d never watched the show, so I didn’t know their names, but I saw the appeal. He was also closer to Rebecca’s age than Donald Wells had been.

  His hand on the doorknob suggested he’d come to close the door. “Who are you? What are you doing on this floor?”

  Great. The last thing I needed was for him to remember my face.

  I ducked my head. “I was here for a delivery, and I was looking for the bathroom. Clearly this isn’t it.”

  He hooked a thumb in the direction of the stairs. “It’s that way. The one with the picture of the person wearing the skirt.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. Part of him clearly didn’t believe my story, and he was going to watch to make sure I actually did go into the bathroom rather than entering a different office.

  I thanked him as if I hadn’t heard the snark in his answer and ducked through the door that was clearly marked as a woman’s washroom. I walked over to the nearest sink and leaned on it.

  My blood pumped hard through my body. Every part of me felt a little wobbly.

  One of the stall doors opened, but the person inside didn’t move to one of the sinks.

  “Are you stalking me?”

  12

  My gaze met Rebecca Wells’ in the bathroom mirror. I turned around slowly.

  Based on the smudges of mascara still lingering under her eyes, she’d been crying and had tried to fix her make-up before going into the bathroom stall. The lights in the bathroom gave her skin a washed-out appearance. She might not have been as young as I originally thought when I saw her at the funeral. Donald Wells was in his sixties. Rebecca Wells could have been in her early fifties.

  That created another strange age gap, though, if she was. Her boyfriend couldn’t have been more than mid-forties.

  She lifted one drawn-in eyebrow at me. “Well?”

  I stuck my hands behind me and gripped the edge of the sink. Rebecca wasn’t going to hurt me, but I felt trapped. “I was delivering cupcakes.”

  “Both here and at my husband’s funeral?” She swept to the other sink and twisted the handle so forcefully I thought it might fly off. She pumped more soap into her palm than any one person could actually need. “My husband’s dead. Isn’t that enough? There’s nothing left to investigate. Why can’t you just leave me alone now?”

  Nothing left to investigate? That made it sound like she suspected someone was following her or having her followed. Maybe to find evidence of her affair?

  No, that didn’t make sense. She’d sounded like her husband being dead should have closed the investigation because it involved him rather than her. If someone had been investigating Donald Wells before he died, then he might have been killed over something he was doing.

  Fortunately or unfortunately, that opened up the suspect pool. It could have still been Rebecca’s boyfriend but with the added motive of rescuing her from whatever trouble Donald had gotten them into. As much as I hated to think it, it could be Elijah as well. Donald might have been doing something that would put the business in jeopardy.

  But if someone was following Rebecca and thought she might lead them to something, it was more likely personal—something Donald was involved in apart from the family business.

  Without more to go on, all I had were guesses.

  I stayed still. Staying very still tended to make a person seem less threatening. “I’ve heard a lot of good things about your husband. If you think something I’ve heard isn’t true, good or bad, I’d be grateful if you corrected me.”

  She shut the water off and flicked droplets off her hands into the sink. “Do you think I’m stupid?” She glanced at me. “Private investigator?”

  She clearly wasn’t going to tell me anything if she thought that was the case. “Cupcake baker.”

  She made a mm-hmm noise. She blasted her hands under the hand dryer. When it shut off, she stepped one step closer to me. “A reporter then?” She glanced in the mirror and swiped a finger underneath one eye. “If I didn’t give an interview to the Michigan Daily for more than you probably make in a year, I’m not going to give one to whatever slimy little paper you belong to.” She narrowed her eyes. “And if I see you following me again, I’m calling the police and getting a restraining order.”

  Could she do that? I wasn’t actually following her around. But it wouldn’t matter if I was or I wasn’t. If she called the police and accused me of it, the police might dig into who I was. I took out one of my business cards and handed it to her. “I really am a baker. I was hired here because of the cupcakes I brought to your husband’s funeral.”

  Rebecca glanced at it and sniffed. “Pirate.”

  “Do you meant privateer? A pirate steals things. A privateer is more like a mercenary. They take advantage of situations for their own profit.”

  She brushed past me and out the door.

  “Nice, Isabel,” I whispered to myself. “You really made a friend by correcting her English.”

  My dad and I used to joke that one of the side effects of having a father who was an English teacher was that I grew up with an inherited pet peeve for grammatical mistakes and misused words. It’d never won me any friends.

  Hopefully Rebecca’s boyfriend—ex-boyfriend now—wasn’t still watching the ladies’ room door, but just in case he was, I’d take my time. I headed into the nearest stall.

  A woman’s purse hung on the hook on the back of the door.

  It had to be Rebecca’s purse. This was the stall she’d come out of.

  I slid it off the hook and paused. Should I chase after her and try to return her purse?

  I held it in my hands. She hadn’t even zipped it up. I could see the contents.

  It wouldn’t take long for me to look through what was inside. Claire had been up again cleaning last night. I heard her scrubbing down the bathroom—the guest bathroom that was my responsibility to clean since I was the one using it. When I asked her what she was doing, she’d said it was better than lying in bed and thinking about how the person who’d killed Donald Wells was still free.

  Who knew what I might find in Rebecca’s purse that could help this case? Maybe she’d kept the business card of the reporter who contacted her for an interview. With a name and phone number, the police could try to find out what story the reporter wanted to write. That could generate a lead on who else might have had motive.

  My chest felt heavy. If I rummaged through her purse, I’d be no better than what she’d accused me of. I might not be a private investigator or a reporter, but if I went into her purse, I’d be invading her privacy.

  I could use Claire as a justification, but Claire wouldn’t want me to. Dan wouldn’t either. A few months ago, that wouldn’t have mattered to me, but their opinions mattered now. They’d given me the benefit of the doubt so many times. They’d put themselves on the line to protect me.

  They wouldn’t want me to turn into a criminal, no matter how small the crime.

  If I hurried, I might still be able to catch Rebecca and return her purse before she left the building. I looped her purse over my wrist.

  I hustled toward the door and reached for the handle. The door swung in. It cracked into my hand. Pain flared through my knuckles, and Rebecca’s purse flipped into the air. Her purse hit the floor, and the contents gushed out like yolk from a cracked egg.

  I dropped down beside it.

  High-heeled feet stopped beside me. One foot tapped on the floor. “What are you doing with my purse? Did you dump it out so you could paw through it?”

  I ran my gaze up until I met Rebecca’s glare leveled down at me. Som
ehow I doubted she’d believe me if I told her the truth. “It was an accident. Let me help you clean it up.”

  “Sure it was an accident. Sure it was.” Rebecca’s mouth twisted as if I’d asked her to eat a raw snake. “My belongings are all over the filthy bathroom floor. I don’t see how that could be accidental. My phone!”

  She squatted just long enough to swipe her phone off the floor.

  If I’d ever hoped to be able to ask this woman questions that might help figure out who had killed her husband, I certainly wasn’t going to be able to now. I’d be lucky if she didn’t want to report me for attempted purse nabbing. That was definitely a crime.

  Rebecca tapped at her screen with a fingernail that was too long to be natural. “I think that’s a crack. You cracked my screen.”

  I could only pray that wasn’t true. Her phone looked like the newest model. It probably cost a few thousand dollars. I couldn’t possibly replace it.

  I grabbed up a handful of scribbled notes and receipts. “I’ll help you clean it up. I promise it was an accident. I was coming to return it to you when you opened the door and hit my hands.”

  “Oh so it’s my fault.” Her voice went impossibly shrill. “I see how it is.”

  She snagged her partially filled purse, pivoted on her heel, and left me standing with the handful of papers. I collected the last few off the floor. All I could do was go after her and try to give them back.

  I hurried out of the bathroom and looked automatically toward the direction of the stairs and elevator. Rebecca wasn’t there. I slowly turned in the other direction.

  Leon, Mary Ellen, and another employee I hadn’t seen before all stood inside the hallway next to the doors to the rooms they must have been in. Rebecca stood with Elijah by his office door.

  Not good. Not good at all. I should have known Rebecca wouldn’t let this go, especially if her phone was broken.

  I glanced down at the paper scraps and receipts in my hand. Would it look more incriminating to try to give them back to her or to simply stuff them in my own purse and throw them out later? Since Rebecca had left without them, they couldn’t have been anything she cared about. She’d made sure she had everything else from her purse, even though it’d all been on the bathroom floor like the papers.

  I shoved them into my own purse. I’d dispose of them later.

  Elijah looked in my direction and met my gaze. He held it.

  “I hired her, Rebecca.” His voice was firm and so calm it seemed almost inhuman. “She’s here to deliver our weekly order of baked goods. The only one who doesn’t have a legitimate reason to be here is you.”

  Rebecca’s cheeks paled, making the arcs of her bronzer and blush stand out. “People aren’t always what they seem.”

  She swept past me and took the stairs rather than the elevator, presumably so she didn’t have to stand there and wait for it to arrive while we all watched her.

  Everyone was still watching me anyway. A shiver slithered over my body, and I couldn’t shake it out of my hands. They trembled against my legs. I stuffed them under my arm pits.

  “Join me for a minute?” Elijah speared the three others with a look. “The rest of you have things you should be doing, do you not?”

  The shaking in my hands spread up my arms. He’d sent Rebecca away, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t taking her accusations seriously. Considering Claire had grilled him at the tasting, he might have decided to cancel our contract.

  Elijah closed the door to his office.

  “I wasn’t following her,” I blurted. “And then she forgot her purse, and I was bringing it back to her when the door knocked it from my hands.”

  “You’ve very poor luck.” Elijah leaned back on his desk and crossed his legs at the ankles. “But I asked you in here to apologize for Rebecca’s behavior. She’s always liked drama and to be the center of attention. We were all shocked when Uncle Donald married her. They were nothing alike. She likely would have left him long ago had it not been for the ironclad prenuptial agreement she had to sign before the wedding.”

  My brain kept circling around the knowledge that he hadn’t brought me back to his office to fire me. He’d actually been embarrassed by Rebecca’s behavior. The rest of what he’d said took a moment to sink in.

  Rebecca had signed a prenuptial agreement. That meant that, had she divorced Donald or had Donald divorced her because of her affair, she likely would have gotten very little. It was the first hint that she might have had a motive for murder.

  But only if she didn’t know that she also wouldn’t receive his fortune if he died before her.

  Elijah had opened a door for me to find out. Unfortunately, it was a door I probably shouldn’t walk through. If I asked any question right now, it might confirm Rebecca’s accusations about me.

  At the same time, if I didn’t take this opportunity, Claire and I might as well give up on trying to help figure out who had killed Donald Wells. Dan would tell me that’s exactly what we should do. But as long as Claire wanted to keep going with this investigation, I had to stick with her. She’d proven she couldn’t do it on her own and also that she wasn’t going to be able to rest until it was over.

  I wasn’t sure whether I would have walked away from the investigation or not had I been the only one involved. But I couldn’t give up when Claire was still struggling. She’d given me a place to live, despite knowing that it might one day bring my crazy husband to her doorstep. She’d taken a risk on becoming my business partner, even though she knew Isabel Addington wasn’t even my real name. The least I could do was investigate this murder if that’s what it took to give her peace of mind again.

  Besides, if Rebecca had killed her husband, I might have just made myself a target. She thought I was investigating her. Technically, prior to this moment, that hadn’t been true. I’d been looking into her husband’s death, but I hadn’t considered her. Everything I saw pointed to her innocence.

  I couldn’t take that risk now. If I had to watch out for her, I needed to know.

  My mouth felt so dry that my tongue could have been attached to the floor of it. I swallowed.

  I had to approach this carefully, though. It couldn’t sound nosy. Elijah would shut down the same way he had when Claire tried to pry information from him with a verbal crowbar.

  It needed to sound like I was a little afraid of her. Like I needed him to rescue me again. Based on what I knew of him from his charitable giving and how he’d seen my reaction to Rebecca and wanted to reassure me, that was my best chance.

  “I know this isn’t my place, but she looked angry enough to kill when she left here, and I need to know if I’m in danger. If she could have murdered your uncle. She knew she wouldn’t get anything in a divorce, but did she know she wouldn’t get anything if he predeceased her?”

  Elijah looked at me long enough that I was sure he wasn’t going to answer. I wanted to squirm in my seat, but squirming was what guilty people did. I learned that early on when I needed to lie to Jarrod about something. Fidgeting indicated a guilty conscience, at least according to him.

  I stayed as still as I could, shaking hands aside, and met Elijah’s gaze.

  He sighed in a way that sounded tired. “As much as I’d like to deny it, she did. My uncle had enemies who might have wanted to kill him, but I don’t think my aunt—for all her flaws—was one of them.”

  13

  For the first time in my life, bruises meant success.

  Dan had been able to demonstrate how to escape a hold, and I’d gone through with it. I hadn’t even felt discouraged when we’d passed the group class on our way out, and I saw how far ahead of me they were. I’d get there. I didn’t have a timeline like they did. Dan said his friend ran this class every twelve weeks. We’d be able to keep coming as long as I needed.

  Dan parked in front of Claire’s house—my house—and gently pressed his fingers to his cheekbone. “Good thing you gave me this rather than the other way around.”

&nb
sp; I cast him a sidelong glance. “What? You wouldn’t want to try to explain to people how you gave me a shiner?”

  “I wouldn’t want you to lose customers because you looked like you got in a fist fight. If I go to investigate a case looking black and blue, suspects will think I’m tough.”

  He flexed a t-shirted arm.

  Dan wasn’t heavily muscled like the man who ran the self-defense class, but he was fit enough that flexing did show off his toned arm. The same arm that’d been around me more times than I could count now and was helping me learn to feel safe again.

  There was a time when I thought that would never happen.

  I laughed at Dan’s joke and climbed out of the car.

  “They’re back,” Janie’s voice called out from the direction of the kitchen as soon as I opened the door.

  She ran down the hall with Claire’s no running in the house echoing after her. She stopped in front of me and thrust out a homemade card. The red construction paper sported a yellow flower, the two colors coming together to make the petals look distinctly orange.

  I opened it. Inside, she’d printed her name in her big, blocky, just-learning-to-write style. She’d also drawn a heart.

  Dan scooped her off the floor and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Where’s my card, munchkin?”

  He set her down, and Janie gave him her most serious face. “You’ve gotten plenty of cards from me. Isabel needed one.”

  My throat clogged. Which was stupid. A card shouldn’t make me feel like crying. There wasn’t even any reason to cry.

  I blinked hard and gave Janie my biggest smile. “I’ll put it on the fridge where I can see it every morning.”

  Janie nodded like she wouldn’t have expected anything less.

  Claire finally caught up to her and turned her around. “Go put away the crayons and the rest of the art supplies.”

  Janie glanced at Claire as if she was considering running there, but she skipped off instead. She cast a look back over her shoulder that clearly said I’m not running. Claire pretended not to notice.